Abstract
With the intention to study the implications and their affinity with and deviation from reality, the present study will analyze Number9Dream (2001) in terms of its narrative style, ontological qualities, and certain conventions which lead to the particular genre of dystopian science fiction. It tends to settle the following questions: are the implications and contributions of categorizing Number9Dream as a dystopian science fiction significant in any way? What is the role and ontological significance of setting in the novel? Narratological approach and genre criticism are applied to the novel to analyze it from the perspective of its critical engagement with dystopia. It traces science fictional elements and then continues to examine their utopian or dystopian nature and the different functions of those elements. It also refers to the connection between the given ontologies and reality. The present article shows that the novel provides a range of multiple possible worlds through two layers of internal and external ontology which are the representations of the real world. Dystopian narrative and science fiction conventions are exploited to address today's world issues. Through a detached view toward the present societies, Mitchell gives the opportunity to criticize what is not otherwise visible. The novel warns about human's isolation, alienation, and dehumanization and calls people to action accordingly. It briefly refers to the reconciliation of past/ present and nature/ science as a solution.
Highlights
For its intrinsic capacities of form and content, dystopian science fiction has great appeal for many postmodern writers including David Stephen Mitchell
This research investigates the extent of novel's accordance with dystopian science fiction elements, their implications and their affinity with reality of the present. It tries to answer the following questions: are the implications and contributions of categorizing Number9Dream as a dystopian science fiction significant in any way? What is the role and ontological significance of setting in the novel? To study narrative styles and strategies in terms of both form and content, narratological approach and the genre criticism, significant in narrative interpretation, are applied to the novel. The elements of both science fiction and dystopia, their connection, and the so-called nova data or novum are studied in the external ontology of the novel
Number9Dream presents the elements of dystopian science fiction in two levels: the immediate world of the fiction which McHale calls external ontology and the character's daydreaming, video games, and imaginations which make the internal ontologies
Summary
For its intrinsic capacities of form and content, dystopian science fiction has great appeal for many postmodern writers including David Stephen Mitchell. One of the informative readings is William Stephenson's "Moonlight bright as a UFO Abduction: Science Fiction, Present-Future Alienation and Cognitive Mapping." In his essay, Stephenson traces the elements of science fiction in Mitchell's early works He talks about novum, a "key device of all science fiction," "meaning a thing not found in the world of the reader" and he counts them: quasi-human Replicants, bioborges, virtual receptionists and digital life in Number9Dream. To study narrative styles and strategies in terms of both form and content, narratological approach and the genre criticism, significant in narrative interpretation, are applied to the novel The elements of both science fiction and dystopia, their connection, and the so-called nova data or novum are studied in the external ontology of the novel. The last part touches upon the role of identity and dehumanization in the depicted society
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